1. Field
The present invention is broadly concerned with blade dressing devices for the sharpening or conditioning of knife blades or other elongate objects or utensils. More particularly, the invention is concerned with dressing devices of the type including a pair of rotatable disks cooperatively defining a circumferential dressing opening, in which a knife or the like is dressed (i.e., sharpened or steeled).
2. Related Art
Man has required a means for sharpening knives, blades, and other edged utensils for thousands of years. The simplest sharpening device is an abrasive sharpening stone which is drawn over a blade or the like in an effort to create a sharpened edge. Effective sharpening using such stones requires considerable skill. A wide variety of more sophisticated sharpening devices have also been proposed, such as V-notch sharpeners intended to simultaneously sharpen both edge faces of a blade. Generally, these V-notch sharpeners do not provide any integrated control of blade angle, but depend upon the skill of the user to properly orient the blade for sharpening.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,646,653 describes a knife sharpening apparatus including a pair of opposed, toothed disks which cooperatively define a circumferential knife-receiving opening. Each disk has spaced apart, inclined, projecting teeth which mesh with the teeth of the opposing disk. The disks are also biased together by means of a spring arrangement. Other types of sharpening devices are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 989,692, 5,390,431, 4,090,418, 4,685,250, 6,290,582, 5,655,959, 4,672,778, 5,390,445, 5,478,272, 4,807,399, 6,012,971, and 7,198,558, as well as published Patent Application No. U.S. 2004/0171337.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,198,558 (the '558 patent), assigned of record to the assignee of the present application, describes a blade dressing device including a pair of rotatable, toothed, biased-together disks cooperatively defining a circumferential dressing opening, in which a knife or the like is dressed. The disks described in the '558 patent have concave dressing surfaces, with each of the teeth forming one of the dressing surfaces. However, one drawback of this blade dressing device, is that inserting the blade in the opening formed by the two disks sometimes causes the blade to jump or recoil, creating flaws in the sharpened blade.